“Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an unperson.”

Defense Budget Nonsense

Secretary of Defense Gates recently announced that the US would be reworking its defense budget, so that we spend more on some programs and less on others. The basic gist of the changes is to decrease big, expensive advanced things like super F-22 jets and and increasing things related to counterinsurgency. Which makes sense, given the type of conflict in which the US is most likely to be involved. Needless to say, because these changes were announced under a Democratic Prsident, certain tools have tried to make the case that Obama is slashing defense spending, even though this is patently false.

But in the debate over whether the DoD budget goes slightly up or slightly down, a more significant point is overlooked: either way, we spend absurdly too much on the military. Check out the following pie chart comparing US military spending to the rest of the world:The US spends about as much on its military per year as the entire rest of the world combined. Moreover, the second largest military budget in the world is less than 20% of ours. As Matthew Yglesias concluded today:

“It’s true… that we still face international security problems. But it’s not because we’re not spending enough on defense. It’s because we face problems we can’t solve with more defense spending.”

Yeah, that, or maybe Obama just hates America and wants us to lose, AMIRITE!?